Commercial and residential buildings use lighting throughout rooms, hallways, corridors, and other areas to illuminate these locations. During power failures or emergencies, certain lighting can be maintained in the building although the majority of fixtures are not illuminated. This emergency lighting helps illuminate exits and escape routes. Typically, power to illuminate the emergency lighting is provided by a backup power source, such as a generator, battery, or other power line. Unfortunately, not all areas of a building can be illuminated by the emergency lighting system because this would require extensive implementation of the needed components.
When commercial and residential buildings are only partially occupied or empty, such as at night, the need for illuminating certain areas greatly diminishes. For this reason, sometimes only portions of the building's lighting is illuminated to conserve power, while still maintaining at least some illumination for safety and security reasons. Being able to partially illuminate areas of a building to conserve power and to prolong the life of fluorescent or other lights by alleviating nighttime workload can be a great benefit.
What is needed is a way to inexpensively provide emergency or ancillary lighting for commercial and residential applications that can be incorporated into the existing fixtures of such buildings.